Mike Huckabee

By now, you know that Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann was found not guilty of lying to the FBI, even though he did.

In his statement after the trial, Sussmann said he didn’t lie to the FBI. But that was a lie, too. Special Counsel John Durham had absolute proof, in the form of a Perkins Coie billing record and a text to then-FBI general counsel James Baker saying that Sussmann wasn’t meeting with him on behalf of clients when he really was. But the judge used a technicality to let jurors weigh that second piece of evidence minimally, as it had been handed over to Durham by Baker after the statute of limitations had lapsed. Once Sussmann couldn’t be charged for THAT lie –- the one in the text –- Baker happened to remember some texts, including that one. Isn’t it funny how a lapsed statute of limitations can jog someone’s memory?

So it appears Baker and Sussmann were on the same team. Baker helped Sussmann, and so did the judge, who worked like a champ to keep Durham’s evidence out of the courtroom.

Nick Arama discusses the judge’s ruling on Sussmann’s text message here. He also reviews what Durham managed to expose about Hillary and her campaign, noting there is more to come.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/05/31/we-may-not-like-the-sussmann-verdict-but-the-clinton-campaign-was-nailed-n572799

Durham surely knew by the time the jury had been seated --- maybe even by the assignment of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee with huge ties to the Democrat Party and the DOJ --- that his chances of getting a conviction in this Washington DC court were nil. Heck, he probably knew it all along, but he had his reasons for pursuing it. Those who insist Durham’s defeat is some kind of “black mark” against his investigation are missing the important stuff.

Durham has exposed what Hillary and her campaign did, which went well beyond the “political dirty trick” of peddling a fake story to the media. They reinforced their fake story by also peddling it to the FBI to push for an investigation. In other words, they went to federal law enforcement under false pretenses to frame a political opponent, and THAT, if you or I did it, would be very serious indeed.

But this jury treated it like nothing. This is evident because the jury forewoman, who doesn’t give her name, has spoken to the media. And now we can see she went beyond the scope of what she was there to determine, concluding that the case shouldn’t have been prosecuted at all. “There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI,” she told the media.

Oh, REALLY?? What if, say, a Republican attorney for the Trump campaign had gone to a Republican-appointed FBI official with a fake story about Hillary Clinton a few days before the 2016 election, and had flat-out lied and said he wasn’t representing Trump? (Not that anyone would need to peddle a fake story about Hillary; there were enough real scandals about her.) Do you think this solid-Democrat Washington DC jury would just blow that off?

Of course not. They’d call it the crime of the century. They’d say this attorney was working with Russians. They’d blame him for Hillary’s loss. They’d call him an ultra-MAGA deplorable, an insurrectionist, destroyer of institutions, election-interferer. Their quick verdict would be Guilty, Guilty, Guilty. They might not even need any hard evidence, just an accusation by the Democrat special counsel. And that lawyer would be off to jail.

Of course, the judge made it a lot easier for the jury to think this was nothing, as he largely kept Durham’s evidence of the “joint venture” (broader conspiracy) out of the courtroom.

As Jonathan Turley tweeted: “Telling a lie to the FBI was the entire basis for the prosecution. It was the jury’s job to determine the fact of such a lie and its materiality.” As in, ONLY THAT. Turley noted that such a bias, if expressed during jury selection, would have led to this woman being challenged by the prosecution.

And Durham surely would’ve challenged her, but recall that Judge Cooper actually refused his challenge of some members of the jury pool who ended up on the jury.

The kicker: This woman insisted after the trial that politics had not been a factor.

Throughout the past two weeks, we’ve discussed the various factors that people are pointing to now in the post mortem. As Andrew C. McCarthy told FOX News Thursday evening, “In order to figure out this case, I think you really have to make up your mind about what the FBI is. Are they ‘a dupe’ or are they a willing collaborator? Durham has staked his investigation on the notion that they’re a dupe. You have to prove, for materiality purposes in a false statements trial, that the ‘duped’ party actually was fooled. And I think the evidence here was pretty strong that...they weren’t fooled at all by it. They fully knew that they were getting political information from a partisan source. And a lot of what they did was designed to conceal the fact that they knew that.”

All true. But that’s what we think Durham was really in that courtroom to show. Again, he had to know he would lose the Sussmann case, given the judge and jury. We believe this case was, to Durham, a “loss leader.” As you probably know, that’s a term in retail that describes a store selling one item, such as milk, at a loss, just to get people into the store. Similarly, the Sussmann case had to be a loss for Durham, but look at what it accomplished for the investigation as a whole!

In that observation, we are more in line with what Margot Cleveland says in her analysis from Tuesday. “...For all posterity,” she writes, Clinton’s fingerprints will be seen covering the worst political scandal of our country’s history.”

Here’s what she wrote just prior to the jury’s verdict, which, of course, she expected.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/31/even-if-the-jury-doesnt-convict-michael-sussmann-the-special-counsel-has-won/

"...Measuring Durham’s performance by the outcome in United States v. Sussmann would be a mistake,” she said. “...It would ignore the valuable information exposed related to the broader Spygate scandal. Using that gauge as a measure, the special counsel’s office succeeded wildly.”

Her piece is a must-read. It’s infuriating to see how much was made of the Alfa Bank story and the whole Trump-Russia Hoax, considering that it was all based on NOTHING. It became an industry, a make-work program for lawyers. Years wasted, hundreds of attorneys and investigators, many millions of dollars, people’s lives ruined (Michael Flynn, to name one), and the country divided, all over a fake story.

“Justice” became a joke. As Charles Lipson wrote for SPECTATOR, “Despite Sussmann’s not-guilty verdict, his trial revealed the rank odor of Washington politics. It suffuses our courts, our law enforcement bureaucracy, and the mainstream media. It reeks of insider dealing and extreme partisan bias. That stench should alarm anyone concerned about America’s ability to govern democratically.”

This is what the special counsel has exposed, and will continue to expose. Thank you, Mr. Durham.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/stench-from-the-sussmann-verdict/

Mike Huckabee

For the past two weeks --- the last one completely dominated by yet another horrific and senseless school shooting --- I’ve brought you the day-by-day report and detailed analysis of the Michael Sussmann trial, as unfolding in federal court by Special Counsel John Durham. Some might wonder why we’ve paid so much attention to a case that most major media aren’t bothering to cover at all.

John L. Simon, writing for THE EPOCH TIMES, concurs, and has written a commentary called “Why We Are Praying for John Durham.” When it comes to Durham and the deep state he's exposing, Simon is reminded –- in a more secular way, of course –- of that old gospel song, “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.”

He’s dealing with something “extraordinarily significant,” Simon tells us. “He holds in his hands the future of democratic government under the law, republican (small ‘r’) or otherwise, as we know it –- if not forever, for the foreseeable future.”

https://thescotfree.com/opinion/why-we-are-praying-for-john-durham/

You know, Hillary has done some bad things in her time, and has always gotten away with them, but this takes the (Devil’s food) cake. Sure, she’s responsible for mishandling classified documents as Secretary of State with a “secret server” arrangement to keep her dealings out of reach, and then deleting the evidence –- even having it destroyed it with hammers –- but this hoax takes us to a whole new depth of Hillary-ness, at least that we know about so far. And it seems to us that if treason was committed, it was by HER and her allies. As Simon writes…

“While this all may not be treason in the legal/technical sense, it’s certainly as treasonous as any behavior that has come from the political class of either party in any of our lifetimes and, though completely ignored by the legacy media whose culpability in it was nearly total, vastly more serious than Watergate that they still obsess about.”

“Whether or not you believe in American Exceptionalism,” he says (and we’d like to think it still exists, or could), “the country that has been almost since its inception the envy of the world was busy stomping on its own institutions and itself to the edge of being unrecognizable. Could our enemies have asked for more?”

As for this trial, he reminds us that all Sussmann needs for an acquittal is ONE JUROR and notes the similarity to the O.J. jury, as we have. It’s likely that, in solid-blue Washington DC, every last one of the jurors voted for Hillary in 2016, probably even believing that Trump really was being helped in his campaign by Vladimir Putin. Some of them might still believe it. It’s not as if the mainstream media and the DOJ had come out and issued an apology or anything.

But this might not matter, because, as Simon writes, whether Sussmann is convicted or not, “the door has been opened to explore the ‘myriad accomplices’...”

“The question is, will the buck stop at Hillary or will she be thrown under the bus so the other denizens of our political class from the FBI to the White House can skate?” Simon is thinking beyond Hillary, we assume to Main Justice and even the Oval Office. Usually it’s Hillary throwing other people under the bus; this time, depending on who else might be implicated; she might be the one covered with tire tracks.

He says it’s in Durham’s hands “to steer our ship of state back to the rule of law. If not him, who?” And we’ll continue focusing on his effort. In Simon’s words, “It’s our job, every one of us, to disseminate it --- factually and with a minimum of rancor --- as widely as possible as the truth emerges.”

Law professor Jonathan Turley is doing the same, and he has a great opinion piece in THE HILL, “Friends with Benefits: Sussmann trial is a black eye for the FBI.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3504813-friends-with-benefits-sussmann-trial-is-a-black-eye-for-the-fbi/

Turley writes that regardless of how quickly the verdict comes in for Sussmann, the verdict for the Department of Justice needs “little deliberation.” He calls Durham’s investigation “an indictment of a department and a bureau which, once again, appeared willfully blind as they were played by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

He points out the irony of it being Sussmann’s DEFENSE team that implicated Hillary as personally approving what he was doing. We would add that this was probably Durham’s strategy all along, though even he might have been surprised at how easily that testimony was elicited from defense witness Robby Mook.

Even on the stand, former general counsel at the FBI James Baker made it clear that he and Sussmann were friends –- as in, on the same side –- and that the real adversary was the special counsel. “This is not my investigation, it’s yours,” he said to prosecutors who were pressing him for information.

Joe Pientka told FBI agents that they were being ordered by the 7^th Floor (Director James Comey) to investigate the Alfa Bank story, even though it had seemed preposterous to cyber analysts from Day 1. “It’s not an option,” Pientka emailed Special Agent Curtis Heide.

Of course, the FBI clung to the unverified “dossier” as well. As Turley writes, their eagerness “magnifies concern over the bureau’s alleged bias or predisposition on the Trump investigation.”

Jake Sullivan is implicated as well. He had to know the Alfa Bank story was unverified, yet he’s the one who created the sensationalistic bullet points to go along with Hillary’s tweet about it. This liar is currently working in the White House as Biden’s national security adviser. Remember this next time Sullivan comes to the podium to inform the nation about ANYTHING.

Will Durham even be allowed to write a final report on his findings? That’s hard to say, with Merrick Garland running the DOJ. Many in Washington no doubt hope there won’t be one, which is precisely why there MUST be one. Durham will find a way to get it out there.

………………………………..

Postscript

BAD DAY IN WASHINGTON, DC

by Laura Ainsworth, staff writer

The 1955 movie BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, starring Spencer Tracy and a fine ensemble cast, ran last weekend on TCM, and I decided to see it, not realizing it was a morality play with obvious parallels to the Durham special counsel investigation.

It wasn’t intended to be allegorical at the time it was made; in fact, the director tried to minimize comparisons to the blacklisting of the ‘50s. But now –- as conservatives find themselves being the ones blacklisted (“canceled”) and called insurrectionists –- I see amazing similarities to Durham’s investigation of the Trump-Russia hoax.

The setting is a tiny, completely isolated Western town, Black Rock, which, to me, symbolizes the Washington bubble. The law has broken down there, as the sheriff is a figurehead, totally ineffectual. This town is run not by him at all but by a handful of corrupt men who put him there and have him and everybody else intimidated. About four years previously, they did a very bad thing that they’ve so far managed to keep under wraps. But a stranger arrives in town asking questions and sniffing around.  He encounters obstacles at every turn but remains quietly undeterred.

Does that sound like the Durham investigation or what?

Mike Huckabee